One area we’ve been paying particular attention to recently has been the internet traffic for different web site categories. Our friends over at comScore Inc. collect a wealth of information for “measurement of the myriad ways in which the Internet is used and the wide variety of activities that are occurring online.” Nice alliteration, guys.

Using some of the data they’ve allowed us to share with you, we had the bright idea to stuff it into our most favoritest charting type, the treemap. And what’s better than a chart? Answer: an interactive chart with a toggle button.

You’ll need to know a few things to really Juice the data:

• The map is based on unique visitors by site for August 2007 and November 2007.
• Red means a decrease in unique visitors over that three month time period and green means an increase. Black means there is no change.
• You can click on the category headers to zoom into each category. Click on the category header again to zoom back out.
• We provide two views of the data: the default shows just the top ten sites in each category. However, for nearly all categories, sites outside the top 10 account for over 50% of the visitation in the category (the exceptions were Search, Portals, and Auctions where the top players dominate traffic). A checkbox adds “All Others” and gives you a better sense of the size of each category. You can toggle these two views using the checkbox just below the map.
• Due to some confidentiality restrictions that we’re under regarding the raw data, we couldn’t show other metrics that would really make this visualization sing—but I bet if you contacted comScore, they’d be glad to discuss with you.
• A few tech notes. The treemap is adapted from Josh Tynjala’s capable open-source Flex Treemap component. Site images are provided by Amazon.com’s Alexa site thumbnail service.

So, without further ado, take a gander at our latest liberated data:

http://internetmap.juiceanalytics.com/

There’s so much information here, you won’t have any trouble drawing your own conclusions, but here are a few conversation starters:

• Notice that there was a distinct increase in retail web visitors leading up to the holiday seasons.
• Surprise! eBay owns auctions
• Not too good of a showing for those online gambling sites; travel either.
• Sports traffic is up… but not for the MLB.com site. Oh yeah, baseball season is over.

Enjoy.

Disclosure: comScore is a client of Juice Inc.

Feltron Eight

Nice example of an optional, but much more interesting annual report could be formatted.

The Steve Jobs 90 Minute Keynote in 60 Seconds - Mahalo

GREAT summarization of the Job MacWorld 2008 keynote—from 90 minutes to 60 seconds. This demonstrates a good example of how to summarize a great deal of information.

Presentation Zen: 6 Presentation tips from a Steve Jobs keynote

6 good presentation points based on Steve Jobs 2008 MacWorld keynote

Meryl.net » 70+ PowerPoint and Presentation Resources and Great Examples

Great examples of properly using PowerPoint/Keynote.

(You might need to refer to this sniglets posting to fully appreciate this poem)

‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the building,
Not a report was running, not even one the spreadhead was wielding.
The CEO and his team had all gone home, the operations crew quiet.
Marketing and sales were at their parties, out blowing their diet.

I was finishing some email, almost through the pile,
When I saw one about the year-end report—the taste in my mouth just turned to bile.
Every year it was the same, the million dollar BI system full of chart junk.
When I give it to her, my manager will state with a gulp: “I think we’re sunk”.

Then out on the floor there arose such a ruckus,
I sprang from my cube to to see was the fuss was.
Away to the card swipe I flew like a blur,
It was an office creeper, I was quite sure.

The exit sign lights giving the desks an evil glow,
Made me think the end was near, the security number, I did not know.
When what to my wondering eyes should appear,
Not an intruder, but my friends from Juice, so dear.

With a my stack of prints in hand, it made me jump back!
Sure enough, I saw it was Chris and Zach.
With them came their team of ‘sperts,
As he called them by name, I knew then I should cancel my alerts.

“Now David, now Cat, now Jon and Jennie.”
As I looked, I saw more, I didn’t realize there were that many.
They were here to help, to make things easy,
“Stop killing trees” said Zach, “that’s just too cheezy!”

“Chart-based encryption makes your numbers stink,
Your boss won’t like it, she’ll want a drink.”
“Crossing The Last Mile is hard, I know” said Chris,
“That’s why we’re here. We’ve got the cure, take a look at this.”

What I saw! I couldn’t believe my eyes.
It made me want to shout—to celebrate with cries.
It was so simple and easy to understand.
A more fun solution can’t be found in the land.

No more analycide, flufferpoint, or dancing boloneys.
I could actually understand it. O’ The simplicity, the ease.
What they showed me was honest, true and clear
Had you looked in my eye, you would have seen a tear.

“Our mission here is done”, said Zach, “we’ve finished our work.”
“If you hurry home now, you won’t look too much like a jerk.”
“In the future don’t fret, don’t wait until boloney gives you the sicks,”
“Think of Tufte, of Few, and of Haler; then call Juice Analytics.”

They sprang to the Juice Mobile, “turbines to speed, generators to power,”
And away they all flew in the late holiday hour.
But I heard them exclaim, as they ran down the aisle,
“Merry Christmas to all, and finish The Last Mile!”

Juice wishes you and your loved ones a happy and wonderful Holiday Season!

From left to right, Zach, David, Cat, Ken, Chris, and Jon. Not shown, Jennie.

YouTube—MS Paint by freeloveforum

Ah—MS Paint. The endless limitations. This spoof video pokes fun at the design team who made this application.

YouTube—Amazing Footage of MS Paint

Completely amazing step by step footage of the creation of a great image with (you won't believe it) MS Paint - no kidding. This just goes to show that so many times it's not the tool that enables or limits, but the skills of the user.

ColorSchemer | Instant color schemes for your Mac with ColorSchemer Studio OSX

Mac tool to properly select colors that look good together. Adds a new tool to base the scheme on a photo as well.

Amazon.com: Visualizing Data: Books: Ben Fry

Ben Fry is good.

google ridefinder

Shows paths of shuttles in New York City. It's easy to pick up the outline of Manhattan.

daily FedEx plane network

Animation showing FedEx flight patterns over a 2 day period. It's easy to visually pick out patterns from this (i.e. there's no doubt where Memphis is).

Google new chart API

URL to plot charts and return the result as an image right in the browser.

There are two kinds of people in this world: those who put things into two categories and those who don’t. Maybe this isn’t the best representation of the complexities of the human race, but it does give me a cheap lead-in to compare two types of problem solutions: “high tech,” focused on tools, and “high touch,” focused on interpersonal communications.

I was reminded of these two approaches by a recent interesting article in Wired that expresses an opinion about why America’s performance in Iraq has been disappointing. The basic premise of this article is that America has entered into this engagement in a “technology networked” fashion, drowning it in technology; the more, the better.

The article suggests that the US forces would make more progress if they were to spend more time on a “socially networked” approach. For instance, instead of remote controlling a drone from 100 miles away, spend more time drinking chai with local leaders. Not the absence of technology, but the incorporation of technology into a socially based environment.

“If I know where the enemy is, I can kill it. My problem is I can’t connect with the local population.” This was a quote from one division commander. Change a couple of words and you end up with a statement that many of us would find all too familiar:

“If I know where the inefficiency is, I can fix it. My problem is I can’t connect with my data.”

Aren’t we witnessing this in spades right now in the BI space? There’s no lack of number of tools and number of features in these tools. The challenge is figuring out who the real insurgents are and how you deal with them. If you’ve been reading the Juice blog for very long, you have a pretty good feeling for how we approach what we believe is a social problem (high touch) and not a technical one (high tech).

The good news is that the US forces are changing their approach to socialize more with the Iraqi people—hopefully leading to a better Iraq. Is there good news for the BI space? We’d like to hear from you on how you’re making sure you focus enough on the social “high touch” aspects of our space. What’s your insurgent data? How can you get to know it better?